Recent cognitive approaches to the study of religion have yielded much understanding by focusing on common psychological processes that all humans share. One leading theory, Harvey WhitehouseOs modes of religiosity theory, demonstrates how two distinct modes of organizing and transmitting religious traditions emerge from different ways of activating universal memory systems. In Mind and Religion, top scholars from biology to religious studies question, test, evaluate and challenge Whitehou...

Read by Matt Day, acclaimed for his roles in ABC's Rake and Stan's Wolf Creek.Discover the uplifting and nostalgic journey of an unlikely cricket hero.In the Australian summer of 1984, in the small country town of Penguin Hill, Sergeant Roy Cooper is making a name for himself. He's been batting for his local cricket club for decades-and he's a statistical miracle. He's overweight, he makes very few runs, he's not pretty to...

It's the early 1990s and Ruby 'Red' McCoy dreams about one day leaving her weatherboard house on the Central Coast of New South Wales, where her best friend, Stevie, is loose with the truth, and her dad, Sid, is always on the wrong side of the law. But wild, whip-smart Red can't stay out of trouble to save her life, and Sid's latest hustle is more harebrained than usual. Meanwhile, Sergeant Trevor Healy seems to have a vendetta against every generation of the McCoys. Told in Ruby's vivid, ...

How does God become and remain real for modern evangelicals? How are rational, sensible people of faith able to experience the presence of a powerful yet invisible being and sustain that belief in an environment of overwhelming skepticism? T. M. Luhrmann, an anthropologist trained in psychology and the acclaimed author of Of Two Minds, explores the extraordinary process that leads some believers to a place where God is profoundly real and his voice can be heard amid the clutter of...

Born to Believe was previously published in hardcover as Why We Believe What We Believe.Prayer...meditation...speaking in tongues. What do these spiritual activities share and how do they differ? Why do some people believe in God, while others embrace atheism? From the ordinary to the extraordinary, beliefs give meaning to the mysteries of life. They motivate us, provide us with our individual uniqueness, and ultimately change the structure and function of our bra...

In this mind-bending exploration of traditional Christianity, firebrand Peter Rollins turns the tables on conventional wisdom, offering a fresh perspective focused on a life filled with love.Peter Rollins knows one magic trick—now, make sure you watch closely. It has three parts: the Pledge, the Turn, and the Prestige. In Divine Magician, each part comes into play as he explores a radical view of interacting with the world in love.Rollins argues th...

This ambitious, interdisciplinary book seeks to explain the origins of religion using our knowledge of the evolution of cognition. A cognitive anthropologist and psychologist, Scott Atran argues that religion is a by-product of human evolution just as the cognitive intervention, cultural selection, and historical survival of religion is an accommodation of certain existential and moral elements that have evolved in the human condition.

The author of The End of Science chronicles the most advanced research into such experiences as prayer, fasting, and trances in this "great read" ( The Washington Post).How do trances, visions, prayer, satori, and other mystical experiences "work"? What induces and defines them? Is there a scientific explanation for religious mysteries and transcendent meditation? John Horgan investigates a wide range of fields—chemistry, neuroscience, psychology, ...

In this pioneering book Rupert Sheldrake shows how science helps validate seven practices on which all religions are built, and which are part of our common human heritage:· Meditation· Gratitude· Connecting with nature· Relating to plants· Rituals· Singing and chanting· Pilgrimage and holy places.The effects of spiritual practices are now being investigated scientifically as never before, and many studies have shown that religious ...

"All God Worshippers Are Mad: a little book of sanity" seeks to demonstrate in a logical common sense manner that the fundamental beliefs held by all monotheists are incomprehensible and lunatic. It attempts to show that god worshippers themselves do not understand the things they claim to believe, and by which they live their lives. Then it goes on to draw attention to why this matters so urgently in our own era, with the global rise of religious fascism.What is said in this littl...

In Nietzsche and Zen: Self-Overcoming Without a Self, André van der Braak engages Nietzsche in a dialogue with four representatives of the Buddhist Zen tradition: Nagarjuna (c. 150-250), Linji (d. 860), Dogen (1200-1253), and Nishitani (1900-1990). In doing so, he reveals Nietzsche's thought as a philosophy of continuous self-overcoming, in which even the notion of "self" has been overcome. Van der Braak begins by analyzing Nietzsche's relationship to Buddhism and status as a tran...

Within the context of this book "Shades of Darkness" is roughly analogous with Jung's idea of "The Shadow" and Freud's Unconscious.The manuscript covers seven of these shadows or dark sides of our being which I refer to as "The Seven Shades of Darkness". These shades are not based on any esoteric script or religious view or psychological treatise. They merely are my own formulation of seven differing subconscious mentalities which we ought to be cognizant of in our daily interactio...